Betania
Meaning
Spanish form of Bethany, the village near Jerusalem in the Gospels; the place name is probably Aramaic or Hebrew, possibly "house of affliction" or "house of figs"
The story
Betania is Bethany after Spanish vowels get through with it: the village outside Jerusalem where the Gospels place Lazarus, Martha and Mary. The place name itself is probably Aramaic or Hebrew, possibly "house of affliction," possibly "house of figs," and the sources decline to settle it, so neither will we. As a girl's name it belongs to Latin America far more than to Spain, and Brazil holds most of its record: 16,902 women named Betania in the census, 1,931 born in the 1960s and 5,002 in the 1970s, written Betânia there, circumflex and all, which is exactly how our Portuguese pages spell it. The United States line stays small and steady: 376 girls total, 157 of them in the 2010s. For families wanting a biblical name that is not Maria and not on anyone's chart, Betania is the village nobody else thought to visit.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Betania has stayed rare in US records the whole time: no peak decade to name.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
16,902 people · the #1,183 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 12,048 · median age 41
Among people named Betania living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1970s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 173 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Betania deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Betania truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Betania fits with your family’s names and surname.
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